Government Innovation New York

This session draws on the firsthand experience standing up an AI governance function at public health agency. It traces the real shift from policy to practice: building intake and risk-tiering processes, surfacing "shadow AI", holistically evaluating AI solutions, and aligning legal, ethical, privacy, and IT stakeholders. Attendees will leave with a practical framework for treating governance not as friction, but as the guardrail system that lets AI move faster and safer even in an environment where the stakes and constraints are unusually high.

• Building AI intake, evaluation, and risk-tiering processes
• Identifying and governing "shadow AI" across the organization
• Aligning legal, privacy, ethics, cybersecurity, and IT stakeholders
• Accelerating AI adoption through practical governance and operational guardrails

Discover how New York State is transforming digital government services through human-centered design, user research, and accessibility. This session explores how shared design systems and reusable technologies are helping agencies deliver more consistent, inclusive, and user-friendly experiences for New Yorkers.

• Advancing human-centered design through user research and customer feedback to improve digital services
• Building a statewide design system with reusable components and consistent standards across agencies
• Embedding digital accessibility into government services to create inclusive experiences for all New Yorkers
• Equipping agencies with shared tools and technical resources to scale digital innovation and improve service delivery

Addressing vulnerable systems while maintaining operations and exploring valuable new solutions is a challenge that many organizations face. This session covers how to pinpoint high value initiatives that will provide the most return, while right-sizing efforts to ensure your organization continues to flourish. Additionally, several frameworks will be discussed to drive cyber maturity and increase resiliency.

• Maturing Cyber Risk Management in Critical Systems
• Assessing current baseline of the environment and prioritization
• Implementing controls with high value of return.
• Future Proofing: Developing Resilience in Systems

Government innovation depends on public trust and confidence that the systems delivering essential services can withstand real-world attacks. As agencies modernize infrastructure and adopt AI, how can leaders move beyond assumed security to prove their investments are protecting what matters most?

This keynote explores how autonomous, AI-powered offensive security enables government organizations to move from assumptions to evidence-based resilience. Drawing on real-world penetration testing, it examines how autonomous attackers uncover exploitable paths across hybrid environments, expose identity and security control weaknesses, and demonstrate their potential impact on critical missions and services.

For leaders in technology, data, AI, and cybersecurity, the session offers a practical framework for prioritizing proven risks, continuously validating defenses, and accelerating remediation and verification. Attendees will leave with a framework for making more confident, evidence based security decisions, protect sensitive information, and advance government modernization with measurable evidence of resilience to strengthen the reliable delivery of public services.

Enterprise AI projects rarely fail because the model is not sophisticated enough. More often, the problem lies beneath it: stale or unreliable data, fragmented pipelines, limited visibility, and missing business context. As organizations move from AI experimentation to autonomous agents making decisions on live data, those weaknesses become more than an inconvenience. They become a liability. In this session, learn what it takes to build a trusted foundation for enterprise AI through reliable data pipelines, end-to-end observability, meaningful context, and strong governance. Because before you can trust AI to act, you have to trust the data guiding its decisions.

The rise of quantum computing poses a direct risk to today’s encryption standards, threatening the security of sensitive government data and systems. This session will help you understand the urgency of the shift and apply new approaches on how you can strengthen your agency’s security posture for the post-quantum era.

• Assess the real-world risks quantum technologies pose to your current cryptographic systems
• Adapt your organization’s roadmap to meet new post-quantum cryptography standards
• Increase resilience by integrating quantum-safe strategies into existing infrastructure
• Advance inter-agency collaboration to ensure consistent, secure adoption of new practices

Modernizing IT systems is critical for governments seeking to enhance efficiency, improve service delivery, and strengthen cybersecurity. Outdated infrastructure can slow down operations, increase costs, and expose agencies to security risks — making IT transformation a strategic necessity.

This session will explore practical strategies for upgrading legacy systems, integrating emerging technologies, and streamlining digital services to build agility, resilience, and effective risk mitigation across government operations.

Discussion Points:

• Identify key barriers to IT modernization and effective approaches to overcome them
• Explore strategies to integrate cloud, AI, and automation into government operations
• Strengthen cybersecurity resilience while modernizing legacy systems
• Enhance cross-agency collaboration through better data and technology integration
• Leverage GIS technology to improve decision-making, service delivery, infrastructure planning, and risk mitigation

Digital equity is essential as agencies modernize services and adopt new technologies. Without intentional strategies, the digital divide risks leaving vulnerable communities behind and limiting the impact of innovation. This session explores practical approaches for designing inclusive services that expand access, improve outcomes, and build trust across diverse populations.

• Align digital equity strategies with modernization initiatives in transportation and other critical services
• Improve service delivery through inclusive design and accessibility in all public-facing systems
• Maximize technology investments so rural, urban, and transit-reliant communities benefit equally
• Strengthen cross-sector collaboration to close gaps in access, mobility, and digital capability

As New York agencies modernize technology and face workforce turnover, securing critical systems has become increasingly complex. Many legacy platforms depend on decades of institutional knowledge, creating operational and cybersecurity risks as experienced personnel retire. At the same time, agencies are exploring how AI can help preserve expertise, strengthen security, and support system operations while ensuring responsible governance and keeping people at the center of decision-making.

• Securing legacy systems amid workforce transitions
• Preserving institutional knowledge to strengthen cyber resilience
• Using AI to support operations, maintenance, and threat detection
• Governing AI with security, transparency, and human oversight
• Building a resilient cyber workforce through skills development and cross-training

As agencies explore AI, automation, and analytics, the biggest challenge is no longer awareness — it is application. This session will explore how public sector teams can use AI-powered tools to improve decision-making, reduce manual work, streamline service delivery, and support better outcomes for residents.

The discussion will focus on practical use cases, secure adoption, workforce enablement, and how agencies can measure real value beyond pilots and experimentation.

• Identify practical AI and automation use cases in daily government operations
• Use analytics to support faster, better-informed decisions
• Strengthen workforce adoption through training and enablement
• Measure impact on service delivery, efficiency, and resident outcomes

New York government IT leaders face a difficult mandate: advance AI-enabled modernization while maintaining daily operations across fragmented, legacy systems. Learn how Unified ServiceOps connects operational context, workflows, and governance to reduce manual handoffs, improve cross-department visibility, and create capacity for innovation. See how agencies can apply AI and automation to move work from request to resolution faster and deliver more proactive services for employees and the communities they serve.

AI agents are moving from answering questions to autonomously taking action. This creates new challenges for government around visibility, security, accountability, and control. In this fast-paced session, we’ll explore a practical framework to prepare for the agentic era. The agents are coming. The question is whether we’ll be ready for them.

This talk uses our new framework to discuss how the coming agentic sprawl relates to PubSec.

Split into specialized conversation areas and join engaging discussions to dive deeper into your innovation priorities

Roundtable 1: Building Resilient State Agencies for the Future

Roundtable 2: From Requests to Results: How AI-Powered Workflows Help New York Government Move Faster

Roundtable 3: Securing Digital Government: Balancing Modernization, Connectivity, and Cyber Risk

Roundtable 4: From Legacy to Agile - Testing Strategies for Faster, Safer Public Sector Transformation

Roundtable 5: Simplifying Government IT: Modern Endpoint Management for More Resilient Agencies

Roundtable 6: The Quantum Question: What Does It Mean for the Future of Government?

Roundtable 7: From AI Awareness to AI Capability: Building a Workforce Ready to Deliver

Roundtable 8: Securing Critical Services and Infrastructure

2:15- 2:30 PM: Knowledge Sharing and Feedback

A quick-fire share-back: we’ll take the mic around the room for the top takeaways from each roundtable, so you can catch the insights from sessions you missed before reconvening for the rest of the conference.

New York agencies are working to connect risk data, internal controls, and enterprise priorities with practical decisions and adequate resources. This session will help you turn a year of Research Council discussions into practical next steps through a fireside chat and guided brainstorming.

• Apply risk management insights to identify opportunities and strengthen agency decision-making, accountability, and resource allocation.
• Identify where cross-agency support can strengthen risk management structures.
• Prioritize practical solutions to recurring challenges raised through the Research Council.
• Shape poll questions that keep the discussion focused on opportunities and action.

1:30 to 1:35 pm | Welcome and one-year-on overview:

David and Wileen will highlight key themes from the Research Council meetings and set up the solutions focus.

1:35 to 1:55 pm | Fireside Chat: Turn Risk Data into Action and Avoid Analysis Paralysis

New York agencies need to turn risk reporting into timely decisions while balancing limited resources and competing operational priorities. This session will focus on how an agency can connect risk data with what is happening on the ground so risk managers can prioritize responses, make a stronger case for support, and move from analysis to action.

• Translate risk assessments and internal control findings into clear recommendations for agency leadership.
• Test what the data shows against operational experience to identify gaps and avoid misplaced priorities.
• Obtain feedback and use risk data to prioritize staffing, funding, and resources.
• Strengthen follow-through by connecting each priority to a clear decision, responsible owner, and next step.

1:55 to 2:20 pm | Guided solution brainstorming:

Use poll questions and audience input to develop practical responses to the challenges raised across the Research Council meetings.

2:20 to 2:30 pm | Share-back and close: Surface the strongest ideas and identify useful next steps.